The starting position
Village at Liberty Farms is 149 rental homes in Laveen, in southwest Phoenix: 53 one-bedroom, 74 two-bedroom and 19 three-bedroom homes, plus three models. Stellar took the assignment before the first home was delivered, so the property’s rent schedule carried all 149 homes from December 2024 and every month of vacancy counted against it from the start.
Other new build-to-rent communities in the Southwest Valley were leasing at the same time, with concessions of their own. The operating question was the usual one for a ground-up lease-up: how fast to fill it, and how much rent to give away to do it.
What the property was telling us
Absorption came quickly once homes delivered. Monthly-average occupancy went from 4 percent in February 2025 to 52 percent in June and 63 percent in July, the month absorption peaked. Concessions climbed with it, as they do in a lease-up, and by midsummer the face rents were holding while the net rents were not.
By the turn of the year the picture had a different shape. On January 28, 2026 the two- and three-bedroom homes were 100 percent net leased and the one-bedroom plan was at 87 percent, carrying all seven of the homes still to rent. Traffic was healthy, with 81 tours and 32 approved applications in the prior 90 days. The exposure was a floor-plan problem, not a traffic problem.
What changed
Stellar raised asking rents between April and June 2025, from an average of about $1,860 to about $2,040, and held them near $2,000 for the rest of the lease-up rather than cutting the schedule to buy occupancy.
From August 2025 the concession was reduced every month through the end of the year. By January 2026 it was limited to the one-bedroom plan, eight weeks free, with a reduced price on a small number of one-bedroom homes and no concession on the two- and three-bedroom plans.
The property was staffed at two and a half office positions and two maintenance positions through the lease-up.